Misplaced nostalgia

Gimme that old-time religion. Or better still, don't

DOES the New York Times have to take out extra insurance on Ross Douthat's neck and spine against trauma caused by frequent, extended pining stares into America's rear-view mirror? Take last Sunday's column, for instance, in which he lamented the waning influence of "America's old Christian establishment." That establishment, he admitted, could be "exclusivist, snobbish and intolerant," but it "frequently provided a kind of invisible mortar for our culture and a framework for our great debates...It was the hierarchy, discipline and institutional continuity of mainline Protestantism and later Catholicism that built hospitals and schools, orphanages and universities and assimilated generations of immigrants." Well, sort of. Continuity and hierarchy built nothing; individual believers, motivated by their faith as they understood it, paid for the hospitals, schools, etc and others (perhaps some from those "generations of immigrants" benevolently assimilated by their betters) actually hefted the hammers.

The idea that America was a more united country because of Christianity is one of those notions that sounds great, until you start to think about what it actually means. Were politics actually less fractious those halcyon days of which Mr Douthat writes—from the six presidents preceding John F. Kennedy, America's first Catholic president, to Barack Obama's 2008 victory? Perhaps. But it does not follow that Christianity was the cause. America was also far more ethnically homogeneous. Until the Immigration Act of 1965, our benevolent white Christian overlords, in their wisdom, kept tight controls on how many non-white, non-European immigrants could come to America. It was not necessarily that Christianity exercised greater moral authority, but that there were fewer to challenge its claim: fewer Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jains, Jews and so forth, and before the cultural revolutions of the 1960s, fewer (open, avowed) atheists. Mr Douthat seems to think that America's growing religious diversity is something to lament. I do not.

Mr Douthat also credits mainline Christianity with the victories of the civil-rights movement, which is a bit rich. Yes, as he and David Chappell argue, Martin Luther King junior and senior, Fred Shuttlesworth, Fannie Lou Hamer and dozens of other mid-century civil-rights leaders were deeply, profoundly rooted in African-American evangelicalism. And indeed, those leaders not only placed themselves in but were in fact squarely in a prophetic Christian legacy that traces back to the Old Testament. But to say that the "moral and theological arguments" advanced by Christian civil-rights leaders "effectively shame[d] the South into accepting desegregation" not just glosses over but ignores the crucial work of tens of thousands of protestors who put themselves in harm's way. It ignores the work of the NAACP, the Legal Defense Fund, Thurgood Marshall and similar attorneys. And most importantly, it ignores the violent resistance with which white Southerners greeted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other legal—not theological—blows meted out against segregation.

Now, one could, and perhaps Mr Douthat would, argue that many protestors and many black activists and attorneys drew their strength from the Christian church—especially if the point of your argument was not to determine an honest accounting of civil-rights victories but to show mainline Christianity in the best, softest, most flattering possible light. But their work was not principally theological in nature. And in any event, if theological argument advanced the cause of desegregation, Southern Baptists used theological underpinnings to justify segregation—something for which they did not apologise until 1995. Mr Douthat claims that "the myth that Mr Obama is a Muslim" has taken root because of Mr Obama's affiliation with Jeremiah Wright's church, a denomination that "seems far more alien to many white Christians than did the African-American Christianity of Martin Luther King, Jr. or even Jesse Jackson." (Even Jesse Jackson!) Note the utter lack of evidence to support that claim. Dr King preached against desegregation: a view that Southern Baptists literally believed transgressed Biblical teachings. Mr Wright was just a loudmouth: small potatoes by comparison. I have a very difficult time believing white Southern segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s viewed Dr King's Christianity more charitably than white Southern Republicans today view Jeremiah Wright, whom Mr Douthat seems only grudgingly to accept as Christian. But of course that's the thing about theology: it is capacious and fungible enough to justify almost any political position.

This column put me in mind of one Mr Douthat wrote about 18 months back, during the controversy over the "ground-zero mosque". It did for anti-immigrant nativism more or less what the current column does for "exclusivist, snobbish and intolerant" mainline American Christianity. In neither case is Mr Douthat fundamentally wrong: nativist pressure may have driven immigrants to assimilate more quickly and eagerly than they do today, and mainstream Christianity may have bound the country together. But in neither case is he fundamentally right, either: immigrants tend to assimilate pretty quickly of their own accord precisely because America is not fundamentally nativist, and in any event, as Jamelle Bouie pointed out when the first column came out, nativists didn't want immigrants to assimilate; they wanted them to stay out. And what does it mean, precisely, to lament the lack of authoritative American Christianity in an ever more religiously diverse America. Should non-Christians like me keep quiet? If so, why? We're not here at Christian America's sufferance; we're not guests; we have as much claim to this country as anyone else. And if not, well, surely Mr Douthat would be better off urging religion to play less of a role in public life, rather than more.

What a relief to hear this. I was slowly getting paranoid about the future direction of the world - i.e., fundamentalists in power everywhere. Muslim fundamentalists, political leaders in the West who do not believe in the seperation of religion and the state, Jewish leaders who quote from a 3,000 year old book to grab land, etc. At this rate, the planet will self-destruct!!!

I am not familiar with the writings of Mr. Douthat but any argument that is based on a nostalgic view of the past is peddling snake oil.

There was and is no Garden of Eden, no Republic of Virtue and no good ole days. If you think the opposite, it is probably because you and your kind were on top but rest assured that there were lots of others of different colour, religion, sexual orientation or just plain poor who would beg to differ.

That blacks, Jews and homosexuals, and other minorities are better off today than ever before does not mean that white, religious heterosexuals are worse off except by relative comparison to others. I suspect that it is this relative comparison that leads to nostalgia.

For most people most of the time, the past is worse than the present, featuring more hypocrisy, more bigotry and more poverty. It is worth looking at the past: just not wistfully.

First, the point isn't that religion=racism or even that religion is particularly divisive. It's that the notion that Christianity is somehow a big uniting force on a national level is bogus. Europe was fighting over what brand of Christianity was correct for centuries until they decided that they didn't care any more. Just a few decades ago, it was a huge deal to elect a Catholic. And now there are those arguing that Mormons aren't really Christian. You don't have to think Christianity is bad to see that it isn't particularly unifying.

And it isn't that diversity of religion is "good", it's that it is a fact. We don't -- legally can't -- have a national religion and there are people of many other faiths or no faith at all in the country. They aren't second-class citizens; they are as good as you think you are.

From the outside it seems that the US is a highly Christian country. The majority of the citizens do not believe in the theory of evolution!!! The key issue that will confront the voters this year will be whether a Mormon can be considered to be truly Christian??

Prior to the Civil War, the Southern Baptist Convention split from the Northern Baptist Convention because the Southern Baptists supported slavery. The Ku Klux Klan are also Bible believing Christians, and I never heard Jesus disagree with their interpretation of Christianity.

I’m fully on board with the implicit dismissal of the unproven claims that we are (or ever were) “one nation under God”, or that “this nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles”.

We’re still only in the primaries of this election cycle, but I’ve seen plenty already: Protestants who won’t vote for a Catholic, Catholics who won’t vote for a Mormon, Mormons who won’t vote for a Jew, etc. And let’s not forget the 52% of all of them who won’t vote for an atheist (according to the most recent poll I saw). One nation under God has become a bad joke.

It is significant that while most of the founders personally appear to have been Christian, neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mention anything about exclusively Judeo-Christian principles (much less define them). I have met zealots who claim that freedom is an inherently Christian ideal, but this appears to be wishful thinking on their part; just for starters, read Herodotus, who wrote of aspirations to freedom from tyranny around 500 years before the birth of Christ (in particular, the speech of Otanes – after the palace coup following the death of Cambyses - in favor of a Persian republic, vs a monarchy): Christ and his followers may well proclaim and celebrate the ideal of freedom, but they clearly did not conceive it.

Everything I have learned about the founding of the USA consistently compels me to the conclusion that it was - if only one thing - the revolutionary zeal with which men like Jefferson, Washington, Madison and the others committed themselves to the ideal of freedom of the individual.

Personally, I don’t believe there’s any such thing as a Christian nation, nor an Islamic, nor a Hindu, nor an atheist nation; all for the simple reason that no nation on this earth thinks with one mind nor speaks with one voice. Only an individual citizen can subscribe (or not) to a religion, or pledge allegiance to a particular deity. Passionate zealots in Saudi Arabia or Iran can shout as loudly as they like that they are “Islamic nations”, but what is that supposed to mean? That each one of their citizens is a Muslim? To prove that wrong, I only need to find one exception. That all their laws derive from Islamic texts? Fine; but that doesn’t make an Islamic country; it makes an Islamic government. So you are absolutely correct when you state it was individuals who “paid for the schools, hospitals, etc…”.

No religion has any claim on the values that make America great. Or Australia. Or the UK. Or Japan. Each nation is what its people make it, great or otherwise.

Well, George Washington explicitly talked about how freedom of religion was meant to apply to Judaism in a letter to a synagogue. Anyway, historical quotes aside, the first amendment does apply to all religions, not just Christianity.

The United States was less Christian in Thomas Jefferson's day, or else he never could have been elected President.

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose. " — Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites" –Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782.

"Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus."

"The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ."

"Mr Douthat seems to think that America's growing religious diversity is something to lament. I do not."
Mr Douthat, of course, says no such thing. But more importantly, the author of this article owes it to his or her readers to make a positive case for the advantage of America's growing religious diversity, rather than assume the audience's agreement on this point. And it is an especially timely moment for the argument for the virtue of diversity for diversity's sake -- Breivik's trial has just begun. Will Europe and America be content to watch Norway prosecute one mass-murderer, or will they make a compelling argument in support of the "multiculturalism" that man sought to destroy?

America used to be far less religious and Christian than it is today. The first six Presidents were deists, and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln had well deserved reputations as anti-Christians. Mark Twain wrote incendiary anti-religious satire, and Robert Ingersoll delivered even more incendiary anti-religious lectures throughout late 19th century America. Of course, Zionist false flag terrorism would have been incomprehensible in those days.

Well of course I can't disguise my own sympathies, but there seems be a thread of chauvanism right through the article against religious belief in general. It is a mistake to imagine that religious beliefs are somehow a choice, like a political belief. Many modern atheists however seem to imagine that if only they repeated their argumnents often enough and loudly enough that somehow everyone will become an atheist. I personally don't believe that is going to happen, so I think it is wise to tolerate religious belief, even if I am not a religious person. It's part of the world we live in, and no amount of wishful thinking is going to make it go away, no matter how much knowledge we accumulate.

Do and believe what you like, just don't try to force me or anyone else to live what you consider to be the virtuous life. That really isn't so hard.
If you want to discuss your faith with me, or why you believe the virtues you cherish are worth living by, I'll listen as long as you reciprocate.
But this sort of open and respectful discourse is not how things have tended to work. Religious majorities tend to use the power of the State to force others to live according to their professed virtue. That's why those of us in the (ir)religious minority get a little worried about this kind of talk.

As an atheist, the constant whining about us shoving our beliefs down Christian throats always strikes me as rich. You'll have a transgender, Jewish amputee as President before this country allows an atheist to hold the office. Further, I can go days, weeks, months without seeing any type of reference to atheism, whereas on a daily basis I'm subjected to Christianity and people trying to convert me.

And less polarized politics? Please. Look at Andrew Jackson's first run for President - both "good devout Christians" and yet it was as polarized as possible.

And finally, as a religion [Christianity] that believes in proselytizing and mission work, I really can't stomach being told to shut up and now my place. How about YOU tone it down?

"it ignores the violent resistance with which white Southerners greeted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other legal—not theological—blows meted out against segregation."

It also ignores the irony that this white resistance had Biblical arguments all it's own in favor of preserving segregation. This same irony is lost on Christians who try to argue that Christian morality was behind the abolition of slavery. The institution of slavery was equally propped up by Christian arguments of a divinely sanctioned superiority of whites.

The vaunted Judeo-Christian values, presuming that includes the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible, include acceptance of slavery, along with other barbaric Sharia type practices.

It is thanks to the rise of rational secular morality and the decline of bronze-age Judeo-Christian values that we are advancing morally and ethically out of the dim past and into a brighter future.

Thanks for speaking out against Douthat's tiresome apologies and exaggerated claims on behalf of religion.

I agree with you, but would make two observations. Firstly, that religious beliefs are formed in my experience in childhood, not adulthood. As such we are subject to the beliefs in the society we are born into. They are of course modified over time, and some people change their beliefs quite radically, but in general we can't escape our formative environment.

Secondly, trying to proselytize is a characteristic of the new-atheists such as Richard Dawkins, and this in itself is a religious behaviour. So he may call himself an atheist (and his book sold like hot-cakes also), but he is also human. Hence his belief that he has to convert people to his own point of view. This is a characterstic many people attribute to religion, but it is in fact basic human psychology.